


Collecting the Remains

by gingertart50



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 12:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1549976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingertart50/pseuds/gingertart50
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Narcissa had always known that there was unfinished business between Lucius and Snape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collecting the Remains

Narcissa Malfoy gripped a fold of her cloak in her right hand, her fingers empty without her wand. She had left it with Draco, in case he needed to defend himself. She could just make out the sweat-dampened silk of her husband's robe through the partially opened doorway. There was a scent of something metallic and foreboding.

"Lucius?" she called softly, wondering why he stood so still.

"Fuck," he said. "Oh fucking Merlin!"

She had never heard him swear, not like this, like a Muggle or a minion. The coarse language did not suit his carefully enunciated vowels. She warily pushed open the door. It grated on the uneven floor, sending up little eddies of dust like the ghosts of doxies, to skip across the planks and die at the edge of a dark pool of liquid. Narcissa prided herself on her courage, but she needed all of it now, to step inside the room where Severus Snape lay in a huddle of black robes and gore.

The day had been one great, swooping roller-coaster ride of emotions. She had feared for the lives of her husband and her son, she had laid out her sister's dead body, she had despaired, and she had carefully, cautiously allowed hope to bloom again. She was numb and empty; emotions had swept through her, scouring her clean, and she had little left to give. She turned to Lucius, her hand extended to lead him away.

He did not look like her husband, but a stranger, caught in the middle of a tragedy of his own making. His grey eyes were dark with shock and the most terrible, aching loss that she had ever seen on a human face.

"I sent him," he whispered. "The Dark Lord told me to send him and I did, but I should have told him to run."

"No," Narcissa said strongly, "The Dark Lord would have killed you and then Severus; there was nothing you could have done. Come, Lucius." Again she held out her hand but he ignored it. He was slightly bent in the middle, as if someone had punched him in the gut. She knew that he did not mean to ignore her. He never did intend to wound; he was always so startled when his actions hurt the ones he professed to love. He was submerged in shock and loss and guilt. She allowed her hand to drop to her side.

She stepped past the blood and leaned down to touch Snape's face. It was surprisingly pliant and warm. His eyes were closed but she stroked the lids with her fingers nonetheless, ensuring they remained shut so Lucius could pretend his dear friend was only sleeping. Something twitched under the thin skin, a flicker as the eyeball moved.

Narcissa sank down onto her heels, unmindful of the blood soaking into the hem of her robe. Her choice was stark before her; a choice as personally momentous as her decision to lie to the Dark Lord about Potter's survival. If she turned away, Snape would lie here until he truly died. No-one had time to collect the un-mourned dead – and who else was there to mourn Snape's passing, except for them? Except for her husband, whose face was ruined with a grief far more savage than could be accounted for by the death of a friend? He had not wept at the fall of Greyback or Bellatrix, but he wept now; silent tears trickling unheeded to drip onto his collar. He looked a mess. She ought to take him home, insist that he take a Calming Draught, instruct the elves to run his bath and fetch clean clothes, prepare his favourite food and begin scouring the darkness from the Manor.

Lucius would recover. He had excuses for grief aplenty; he need not hide his mourning, only its cause. Slowly he would come to enjoy his home again, and his courageous son, and his business interests, and life would go on as it always had, except that he would no longer need to think of excuses to invite himself to Hogwarts, or to closet himself away in his study with a bottle of wine when Snape came to call. He would return to her bed, as he always did when Snape turned him away.

She looked down. She realised that a sliver of dark eye had appeared between lashes so long and black that she was almost envious of them. Snape was awake and aware, and she looked down into that sardonic eye, knowing that she held his life on a thread as fine as a fairy's web, and knowing that he knew it, too.

"Lucius," she said, and she was proud that her voice held steady, "Severus is still alive."

She was looking up at her husband as she spoke and she watched hope rise in his face like the sun, and she knew that all her assumptions were true. He threw himself down, reaching out and then hesitating, unsure of how to aid their stricken companion. She spoke to the air. "Prossy, bring blood replenishing and healing potions and then fetch Healer Blatchford at once."

There was a loud pop as her personal elf materialised with a vial in each hand and then Apparated away to bring the Healer. She gently raised Snape's head and tipped the first potion to his lips, allowing it to fall upon his tongue a drop at a time.

They owed her, now, both of them. She would one day call in her debts, and the idea gave her a frisson, a little thrill of anticipation. She had never considered Snape before in that light, and wondered if he and Lucius still buggered one another – oh yes, she had known about that, all the Slytherins in her year had known – but the naked tenderness on Lucius' face was something else. She wondered if he loved her enough to share.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: lovetoseverus is a goddess of SPAG and plot-bunny wrestling. Just sayin'. 
> 
> Written for Inamac, who correctly guessed that I wrote 'The Number Twelve House Elf Detective Agency' in the SS_HG Exchange. She requested, 'Well, obviously, as it's me I'd pick Severus/Lucius (because there is still not enough Snucius in the world)' and suggested that I write about him judging at his next championship Crup show. However, after my last show, I've gone off judges a bit. Even Lucius.


End file.
